Filed under CSS, Web Design by Jeff Boulay | 0 comments
You have probably heard the terms CSS, Cascading Style Sheet, web standards, accessability thrown around by designers and developers alike, so what does it all mean. I thought that I would write up a quick cheat sheet to get you initiated into the world of semantic based markup.
First lets learn some of the terms what they are about and why you should be using them. First on the list CSS also known as “cascading style sheet”. Wikipedia defines CSS as:
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a stylesheet language used to describe the presentation of a document written in a markup language. Its most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML, but the language can be applied to any kind of XML document, including SVG and XUL. The CSS specifications are maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
so why do we want to use it. well what css is great for is separating design from content. This serves many functions from a design aspect it allows the designer much more control over the layout. Also it allows the code to remain clear of layout and design based markup. All design and layout based markup is stored in a CSS file and is linked to on the pages that want to use this stylesheet. This allows the designer to completely control the look and feel of all linked pages from one location.
Another reason why web owners should be pushing the designer to code using web standards is that since all of the design and layout markup is stored off in a separate file and is only has to load once the over all time it takes a user to load the page is decreased. Search engines also prefer css based websites marked up with semantic code because it makes it easier to determine what is important on your site.
Filed under Online Marketing by Jeff Boulay | 1 comment
I found a lot of my clients asking about RSS. I thought that I would write something up for the non technical people looking to learn a bit more about it and what it can do for your sites online marketing campaign.
What is RSS Anyway? RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and is used to send out in a “Web Feed format” frequently published content such as this blog (which is a perfect example of when to use RSS). Users can then subscribe to these feeds using RSS Readers (AKA abrogators). Once a user is subscribed to a feed they can then get headlines from that feed delivered to them. You can also display RSS Feeds on a web page of a website and it can display linked headlines.
What else is RSS used for? I have already mentioned frequently updated sections of your website that you want people to “subscribe” to but you can also use RSS for podcasts both audio and video based, “widgets” and other small tools used to deliver content.
What should I be using it for? There are two ways that you should be looking to use RSS. The first way that you can use this technology is to set up “web feeds” on your website that will put links to headlines with relevant content. The search engines (i.e. Google freshbot) will like the fact that this content is constantly being updated on your site. They will also like the fact that the content that you are linking out (also known as outbound links) to is relevant to your site.
Another way that you can use RSS is to create a section of your site that uses RSS. Some good areas in your site for RSS are news, press releases, blogs, events, tips, and or any other section in your site that you are in control of that is being updated on a frequent and regular basis.